Chapter 37: Demonstration Prequel — 2
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Location: Camp Lehigh, In front of the SS-Enterprise.
Morning.
Leon's POV.
"Why did we have to go all the way to the docks if we were just going to end up back here?"
I stood at the base of the boarding ramp, hands shoved deep in my pockets, watching the empty road that led from the forecourt and wondering — not for the first time this morning — when exactly my "important guests" were going to bother showing up. The sun had climbed high enough that the early chill had started to burn off, but I still felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.
Raymond stood beside me, arms crossed, glasses pushed to the precise center of his nose in the way they only sat when he'd just adjusted them out of pure nervous habit rather than necessity. I didn't need Luxion's sensors to tell me he was already wishing he were somewhere else — back in the lab, back in the barracks, anywhere that didn't involve standing in front of a procession of people whose titles alone could end careers.
'I'm sorry, Raymond,ç I thought, glancing sideways at him. 'But I don't think I'll make it through this morning on my own.'
"I think it has something to do with politics," he offered, not looking at me, his eyes fixed on the empty road.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
'Damn. He's snappy this morning. Let's not poke that one further.'
I looked at the road again. Still empty. Still just packed gravel curving away toward the treeline, with nothing on it but the early light and a few scattered birds that clearly had better things to do than wait for royalty.
I was bored.
ÇIf you're bored,' something in the back of my head offered helpfully, 'why don't we just ditch them and go finish the rune research instead?'
'Go away, intrusive thought. You're offering nothing but bad suggestions dressed up as tempting ones.'
"You know," Raymond said, "you could try having some patience. It's a useful skill."
"They're late."
"They're our superiors. We don't get to complain about that."
He adjusted his glasses again — maybe deciding the conversation wasn't heading anywhere worth pursuing — and turned his attention fully to the road instead of to me. I let the silence sit there, not unpleasant exactly, just the particular kind of quiet that settles between two people who are both too anxious to make real conversation and too proud to admit it.
"Sir. First carriage sighted."
Luxion's voice arrived in my ear a half-second before my own eyes caught the movement — a dark carriage rolling at an even, unhurried pace down the private road, two horses pulling it without any particular sense of urgency. I straightened before I'd consciously decided to. Beside me, Raymond did the exact same thing at the exact same moment, our spines snapping into the same rigid line like we'd rehearsed it.
Seven months under Barnes could do that to you, apparently, who knew.
The carriage rolled to a stop. The door opened.
Four people stepped out, one after another.
Brigadier General Henry fia Alvery came first, and if I had to summarize the impression he made in a single word, that word would have been *fortress.*
He stood well over six feet, built in the particular way that only comes from decades spent actually in the field rather than behind a desk reading reports about the field. Steel-grey hair, cut close and without ceremony. A neat beard, white at the edges, the kind that suggested he trimmed it himself out of habit rather than vanity. Deep lines bracketed eyes the color of a storm still a few hours out — close enough to see coming, far enough that you had time to prepare for it. A long scar ran down the right side of his jaw from ear to chin, pale and old.
'Im suretThat scar has one hell of a story behind it,* I thought, and immediately filed the curiosity away for later, because right now was very much not the time to ask.
His eyes moved over me. Then over Raymond. Then past us both, sweeping once across the Enterprise behind us, taking in the whole scene in a single unhurried pass that wasted no motion at all.
I felt, distinctly, like a form being checked for completeness — every line reviewed, every box silently ticked or left blank, the final assessment withheld until he'd seen everything he needed to see.
Beside him, Royal Guard Captain Yamato stepped down from the carriage, and the contrast between the two men hit me immediately, almost physically. Where Henry was weight — presence, gravity, the sense of something that didn't need to move to make itself felt — Yamato was the precise opposite. Young. Lean. Quiet in a way that bordered on lazy, though I doubted very much that the laziness was real. Late twenties, maybe, with dark hair greying faintly at the temples and tied back low at the base of his neck. Grey eyes that gave away exactly nothing right up until the precise moment they gave away everything at once.
He wore deep indigo hakama trimmed in silver, and at his hip hung a katana with a single pale cord wrapped around the hilt — the only genuinely bright thing about him, a small deliberate contrast against all that muted color.
One hand rested near that hilt.
Not tense. Not poised for anything in particular. Just habitual — the way a musician's hand finds its way back to an instrument without the rest of the body being consulted about it.
He looked completely at ease.
He also looked like he could move faster than anyone in the vicinity could finish blinking.
Both things were true at the same time, and somehow neither one made the other a lie.
Then, finally — Nicks and Jenna.
I let myself look at them for exactly as long as it took to confirm what I already knew was coming, and then I deliberately moved my eyes to a point somewhere between them and the General, as though I'd simply been taking in the whole group at once rather than specifically searching out two faces.
'Nicks sure has grown.' The thought arrived almost involuntarily. 'Of course he has. It's been close to nine months since we last spoke face to face.'
The dark, unruly hair hadn't changed. The grey-brown eyes hadn't changed. But there was something different in the way he carried himself now — something more settled, more deliberate, the posture of someone who had spent the last several months being systematically broken down and rebuilt by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
'He would absolutely destroy me if we fought right now.' I let that thought sit for a moment, turning it over with a kind of grim, competitive interest. 'Guess I need to step up my training. And that research.'
Jenna's auburn hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, one loose braid hanging free beside her face, that long fringe half-covering one eye in a way that looked deliberately careless and almost certainly wasn't.
'Is that a new style she picked up?' I thought, studying it for half a second longer than I needed to. 'It actually looks good on her.'
'I am absolutely not telling her that. It would inflate her already inflated ego beyond measure.'
††
I stepped forward and bowed — properly, holding the angle a beat longer than was strictly necessary, the way Alfred had drilled into all of us as children for exactly this kind of occasion. Raymond mirrored me half a second behind, with the careful precision of someone who had clearly practiced this in front of a mirror and was determined not to be the one who got it wrong in front of a Brigadier General and a Royal Guard Captain.
"Thank you for coming." I kept my voice level and formal — there was a high-ranking general and a Royal Guard captain standing directly in front of me, and this was very much not the moment to let my mouth run the way it usually did. "I'm Leon fou Bartfort. This is Raymond fou Arkin. We're honored to be in your presence."
Henry looked at me with those storm-grey eyes that didn't seem to miss much of anything, and something crossed his face that wasn't quite a smile — more the shape a smile might take if it were being held in reserve.
"Brigadier General Henry fia Alvery," he said. His voice matched the rest of him — low, even, the kind of voice that didn't need volume to carry. "This is Royal Guard Captain Yamato." He gestured with one hand, and Yamato inclined his head fractionally — the economy of a man with absolutely nothing left to prove to anyone in this courtyard. "And I imagine you don't need an introduction to these two."
He didn't finish the thought, so I picked it up smoothly, the way I'd practiced in my head approximately forty times in the last hour. "Gentlemen, will you be waiting for the rest of your group, or should we go ahead and board?"
I caught the look Jenna was giving me from just behind the General — the specific, pointed look she deployed whenever she felt she'd been filed into a category she hadn't personally approved of — and added, with the smoothness of a minor correction made just in time:
"...and Lady."
Henry studied me for a long moment, his gaze unhurried and entirely unbothered by the silence stretching between us.
"A little too mature for your age, aren't you, lad."
'Okay. How exactly am I supposed to answer that one.' I ran through three different responses in the span of half a second and discarded all of them in favor of the safest available option.
"You honor me with your praise, Brigadier General."
Something shifted in his expression — by roughly the amount a cliff face shifts when the wind changes direction. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. But there, and unmistakably there once you'd seen it. He'd caught the deflection. I could practically watch the calculation running behind those storm-grey eyes, filing the moment away the same careful way he'd filed everything else since stepping out of the carriage.
ÇDammit. I knew I should have practiced more.'
"We'll wait for the rest," Henry said, and turned his attention back to the road, leaving me standing there with the distinct sense that I had just failed a test I hadn't been told I was taking.
††
They didn't have to wait long.
Two more carriages arrived in close succession, rolling to a stop with the unhurried efficiency of vehicles that had been precisely timed rather than rushed — which, knowing the people involved, they almost certainly had been.
From the first stepped Captain Rogers, Queen Mylene, and Natasha, the three of them falling into a loose, practiced formation the moment their feet hit the cobblestones. From the second came a technical team from the Howling Commandos — four engineers wearing the specific, slightly glazed expression of men who had been told they were here to observe something important and given absolutely no other context whatsoever.
The exchange in the forecourt went exactly the way it needed to — formal enough to properly acknowledge the Queen's presence, brief enough that it didn't sprawl into a full ceremony nobody had time for. I watched it unfold from the edges, doing my best impression of someone who was simply standing nearby rather than someone who was watching every gesture for cues about how the next few hours were going to go.
Then we were boarding.
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Watching everyone's faces shift as they stepped through the boarding hatch — everyone's, that is, except Raymond's, who had already been through this particular reveal months ago — Luxion and I couldn't help but grin on the inside.
Well. Mostly me. I wasn't entirely sure Luxion's version of grinning involved anything visible, but I liked to imagine it did.
When we'd designed and built the Enterprise, we'd made the exterior look perfectly ordinary — clean, competent, unremarkable in all the right ways. The interior, on the other hand, was a different conversation entirely. Let's just say we went a bit overboard, hence it was a little ahead of its time.
It had everything. Soft, even lighting that adjusted itself without anyone noticing the adjustment. Elaborate but tasteful decoration along the corridor walls. Materials that didn't exist anywhere in this era. High-grade furniture in the lounge that looked like it belonged in a noble's private study rather than a military transport. And all of it built without wasting a single ounce of structural or energy efficiency in the process.
I led them forward at a pace that was deliberate without being slow, talking as we walked, gesturing occasionally at the corridor branching off toward the engine core or the observation deck.
"The island we're heading to isn't far," I said, stopping at a junction and turning to face the group — which meant briefly, deliberately, not looking at my siblings, a small feat of willpower I was quietly proud of managing. "But I've had rooms prepared for everyone regardless. Any questions before we depart?"
Eleven sets of eyes landed on me at once.
+Luxion,+ I sent through the link, keeping my expression perfectly level, +is it just me, or is it getting cold in here?+
+Temperature is unchanged, Sir,+ Luxion replied instantly, in the careful, considering tone he used when he already knew exactly what was happening and was choosing to explain it anyway. +I believe what you're experiencing is more accurately classified as a cold sweat.+
+Yeah. Good thing we brought Raymond. Otherwise I'd actually be the most nervous person on this ship right now.+
+I am also present, Sir.+
+You don't count. You're never nervous.+
A brief pause — the kind that, in Luxion, usually meant he was running an internal check on whether to argue the point.
+...I'll allow that.+
Brigadier General Alvery's voice cut cleanly through the corridor, low and even. "If we're departing, Cadet — where's the crew?"
I found Raymond in the corner of my eye, and from his expression alone I could read exactly what he was thinking: 'it's your ship, you explain it.' Which begged the obvious follow-up question of why he was even standing here if he wasn't going to help shoulder any of this.
I turned back to the General instead, putting on my best version of confident.
"Ah." I gestured toward Luxion's silver orb, drifting in its usual spot of quiet, unbothered prominence near my shoulder. "Luxion handles all of that. Navigation, systems, course correction. He runs the ship."
Henry looked at the orb.
The orb's single red optical sensor looked back at the General with complete, untroubled equanimity, betraying absolutely nothing about the five hundred meters of capability it actually represented.
Something crossed Henry's face that he kept carefully, deliberately under wraps — interest, maybe, or the particular kind of suspicion that experienced soldiers developed about things that seemed too convenient to be entirely innocent.
"Any other questions?" I asked, before the silence could stretch long enough for anyone to follow up on that look.
A few came — sensible, technical questions, the kind that came from people who took unfamiliar situations seriously rather than dismissing them. I answered as honestly as I could while keeping the Enterprise's actual capabilities carefully underwraps, threading the needle between *convincing* and *too convincing.*
Eventually Henry said, "Thank you for that," in the tone of a man who had gotten precisely what he needed and was now ready to stop standing around in a hallway being polite about it. "I imagine Her Highness is tired."
I recognized that register immediately. A polite man's version of *show us to our rooms, please, before this turns into a tour.*
I was already nodding. "Of course." As always, Luxion — ever helpful, ever one step ahead — was already moving. Three compact drones slid out from a side passage with the smooth, unhurried reliability of things that had been waiting for exactly this moment to be useful. "These will show you the way."
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Omni POV.
The group started to break apart, splitting along the corridor into smaller clusters that drifted toward their assigned quarters.
Natasha was already moving — not quickly, but with the kind of unhurried certainty that suggested she knew exactly where she was headed without needing to check — when she paused mid-step and turned toward Jenna. Something about the shift in her expression registered immediately as *deliberate,* the kind of pause that wasn't an accident.
"Where are you going?" Natasha asked.
Jenna's composure didn't slip — not visibly, not in any way most people would have caught. But there was a half-second pause before she answered, the smallest hitch in her usual confidence.
"I assumed I was meant to follow you, ma'am."
"No." Natasha's voice stayed even, unbothered, almost gentle in its flatness. "You don't have to. I'm sure you've got some catching up to do." Her eyes flicked — just briefly, just for a fraction of a second — toward Leon. Then back to Jenna. "Go with your brother."
"Are you sure?"
"Go."
Jenna went, falling out of Natasha's orbit and drifting toward Leon's side without further argument.
Yamato, who had been observing all of this from two paces back with the kind of total stillness that suggested he was paying far closer attention than his relaxed posture let on, turned toward his apprentice.
"You too, Nicks."
Something passed between them — a look that only exists between people who've trained together long enough that most things have stopped needing to be said out loud. Approval, maybe. Or permission. Or simply an acknowledgment that this moment belonged to someone else now.
Nicks nodded once, a small clean motion, economical the way everything about his bearing had become, and stepped away from Yamato's side without hesitation.
Just like that, the adults were gone — dispersed into their respective quarters and duties, leaving the corridor behind them suddenly, almost startlingly quiet.
And the three of them were alone.
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Leon's POV.
"Luxion," I said, once the last set of footsteps had faded around the corner.
"Yes, Sir."
"Take us out of here."
"Understood."
The engines woke beneath us — a low hum building up through the floor and climbing the walls with the quiet, unhurried authority of something enormous deciding, calmly, to move. The Enterprise lifted off its berth so smoothly that the shift from ground to air felt less like a departure and more like a correction, like the ship had always belonged exactly where it was now going and the ground beneath it had only ever been a temporary inconvenience.
Through the lounge window, the base dropped away beneath us. Camp Lehigh shrank into a green line against the morning water — and then the camouflage systems kicked in, a faint shimmer running along the edges of everything, there and then gone — and we were airborne and invisible, climbing into a sky that had nothing in it but us.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
I looked at my brother.
My brother looked at me.
My sister looked at both of us with the expression of someone who had been patiently waiting for an appropriate moment to speak, had concluded with some finality that no such moment was coming, and had decided to simply proceed without one.
The three of us stood in the lounge, the hum of the engines settling into something almost peaceful beneath our feet.
Outside, the sky was very blue.
Then Jenna said, "Surprise," and struck a pose — one hand on her hip, chin lifted slightly, wearing the precise expression of someone who had waited an unreasonable amount of time to deploy this exact moment and fully intended to extract every last bit of value from it.
I crossed the distance between us in two steps and pulled both of them into a hug that was clumsier than I'd have liked and considerably more genuine than I would ever admit to in front of anyone outside this room.
Jenna made a small noise of protest about her hair getting crushed against my shoulder.
Nicks bore the entire thing with the stoic dignity of a Royal Knight's apprentice who was also, underneath all of it, a fourteen-year-old getting enthusiastically hugged by his little brother on a flying invisible warship.
I stepped back, looking at both of them properly for the first time since the carriage door had opened.
"I'm really glad to see you," I said, and meant every single word of it.
Then immediately ruined the moment by adding: "But why didn't either of you call? I made you those kimoyo beads for a reason."
Nicks pointed at Jenna without a moment's hesitation, clearly thrilled to finally have an opportunity to do so after what I suspected had been months of biting his tongue.
"I wanted to. She wouldn't let me."
"It was supposed to be a surprise," Jenna said.
She did not sound even slightly sorry about it.
I turned to Nicks, and something in my expression must have shifted, because his posture straightened slightly in anticipation.
"Now—" I said, gesturing vaguely at him. "I am genuinely happy about this reunion. Truly. But I have to ask." I pointed at the hakama, the deep indigo fabric, the precise fold of it. "What is *that.*"
Nicks looked down at himself — at the fabric, the tailoring, the way it fell — with the resigned calm of someone who had already been through this exact conversation with several other people and come out the other side mostly intact.
"It's a hakama. Sure, it felt strange at first but I'm used to it now."
"You look good," I said.
And then completely failed to suppress the grin that had been building steadily since the carriage door first opened.
Nicks looked at me. "Then why are you laughing."
"I'm not laughing."
"Yes, you are laughing."
"I'm smiling. Those are different things."
"Leon. Why are you taking pictures."
"For memory's sake."
"Put that away—"
"For *memory's sake,* Nicks—"
"Jenna, tell him to put it away—"
"Hey, Leon," Jenna said, joining in on the fun with the seamless ease of someone who had been waiting for an opening, "when you're done, I want to trade. I've got some of my own."
Nicks turned toward her with an expression of pure, undiluted betrayal. "You said you'd never show those to anyone."
Jenna met it with a look that said, very clearly, *if you pay me, I won't.*
Curious despite myself about what exactly they were referring to, I acted quickly. "Deal," I said.
After that, we just talked.
The ship moved beneath us and the sky outside shifted slowly from morning-pale to a clearer, deeper blue, and we talked the way people only talk when they have eight months of things to say and almost no time left to just be themselves with each other before the adults came looking. I heard about Nicks's training — the long hours, the exacting precision Yamato demanded out of every motion, the way his Storm Grace had grown into something different than it used to be, sharper and more deliberate than the raw power I remembered from our sparring match years ago. He listened, in turn, to my own complaints about Barnes, and the look of genuine, heartfelt sympathy he gave me afterward was almost worth the months of suffering on its own.
Jenna offered very little about her own work, which struck me as faintly strange — she'd never been one to keep details close to her chest before — but there wasn't much I could do about it beyond noting it and letting it go. She made up for the silence by talking about everything *not* related to her training instead, filling the gap with enough commentary and gossip that nobody seemed to notice the gap was there at all.
Talking to them again face to face really drove home how much I'd missed my siblings. Video calls, it turned out, really were different from this — from the actual weight of being in the same room, watching someone's face do the thing it actually did instead of the flattened version a screen gave you.
I made a mental note to complain to Luxion about it later, purely on principle.